Interfaith

First of a Series of Reports On Climate Outreach to Various
Faith Groups

Interfaith National
Campaigns Manager Andree Duggan says initial commitments to participate have
come, in order of number, from Episcopalian, Unitarian, Catholic, Methodist,
United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Quaker, Jewish, Baptist,
Buddhist, Disciples of Christ, Mennonite, Bahá’is, and some Muslim
congregations. Muslims and Evangelicals apparently are the most resistant to
seeing climate change as a religious issue or one worthy of their concern.

No two climate change
messages to different religious groups will necessarily be alike, of course,
and the Interfaith organization and other coalitions of religious interests
such as the National Religious
Partnership for the Environment offer
resources and guidelines for tailoring climate change sermons to specific
religious groups.

Themes Appealing Across Religious Denominations

At the same time, The
Reverend Sally Bingham of Interfaith emphasizes that all major religions share
several common principles which on their own pretty much compel attention to
the climate issue.

“All major religions have
a mandate to care for God’s Creation,” the organization says, adding that
global warming “is compromising our future,” making it an “urgent moral
crisis.”

“All people of faith
share a moral obligation to care for the poor and vulnerable,” Interfaith says
in explaining climate change as a faith issue. “These are the people who are
least able to adapt and who are most affected by the climate crisis. We must
not turn our backs on the poorest or on future generations.”

Emphasizing that “the
world’s scientists agree” that Earth’s atmosphere is warming in substantial
part because of human activities, Bingham says in a video presentation that
global warming is “the greatest moral issue of our time.” She points to Mark
12:28 — “Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Yourself” — and says people of faith
therefore would not pollute or foul their neighbors’ properties. She defines
neighbors to include future generations.

“Everything we do as
human beings today has an effect on someone else. And in the Judeo-Christian
tradition, we are called to love our neighbors, love God and love our neighbors
…. You won’t pollute your neighbor’s air or water. And if we think of neighbors
as the next generation, we have to think about how our behavior is going to
affect the people who come after us. And it’s kind of sad to think that we may
care more about ourselves than we do about our children, and sometimes we behave
that way.”

Interpreting words like
“stewardship,” “Creation,” and “dominion” to mean “exploit and use for our
purposes, and not think about how our use affects the future” is counter to
religious convictions, Bingham says. Under such interpretations, “We are not
doing what God called us to do. Dominion means stewardship, care for, love for
… the same kind of dominion that God has over us.”

Religious Tenets ‘Compelling’ Action on Climate

In that same Interfaith
video, Rabbi Melanie Aron, of Congregation Shir Hadash, in Los Gatos, Ca.,
equates a do-nothing approach to climate change to a person’s sitting by a pool
and reading while a child in sight is drowning. “You would be seriously
condemned,” she says, “but today, many of us are standing idly by while the lives
of the children of the future are being seriously threatened.”

That verb “compel” comes
up also in discussions with Matthew Anderson, executive director of a separate
interfaith group, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which
is also targeting climate change as its priority issue.

“Many of us share a deep
conviction that global climate change presents an unprecedented threat to the
integrity of life on Earth and a challenge to universal values that bind us as
human beings,” his organization says on its website. It points to “a broad
consensus on causes and potential consequences” among “highly regarded
institutions in the international scientific community.”

“When ‘discernable human
influence’ is determined to be a cause of destruction, we are dealing with
moral and ethical concerns as well as scientific and policy issues. For many,
these are shaped by religious conviction.”

“Love of God, and God’s
love of us,” Anderson said, leads to “our call to care for our neighbor and the
whole of God’s gracious gift of Creation.” Those considerations “compel us to
respond to climate change,” he said in a phone interview, “and to be good
stewards of Creation.”

Science/Religious Differences Bridged by Common Values

NRPE acknowledges on its
site frequent differences between religion and science, but says “stewardship,
justice, protection of the weak, inter-generational duty, and prudence are
universal values when responsible scientific study has identified grave risk.”

Anderson said he regrets
that climate change “is often portrayed as a scientific or political debate.”
Instead, he and the NRPE members see it as “a fact of life,” and one requiring
moral and ethical responses. That “compels us to respond to climate change,”
Anderson said.

What is most needed at
this point? NRPE on its website offers this answer: “Moral vision and
leadership. Resources of human character and spirit — love of life,
far-sightedness, solidarity — are needed to awaken a sufficient sense of
urgency and resolve.”

‘Skeptics’ Also Targeting Faith Groups

Organizations and
interests deeply concerned about climate change and its impacts are not the
only ones reaching out to faith groups. A distinctly different take comes from
the climate-contrarian Cornwall Alliance,
headquartered in Virginia, not far from Washington, D.C.

Using some of the same
wording, biblical passages, and emotional tugs — the future of our children, concern
for the poor, equity — this group reaches radically different conclusions. It
holds, for instance, that “Earth and its ecosystems — created by God’s
intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence
— are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited
for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no
exception.”

“We deny that carbon
dioxide — essential to all plant growth — is a pollutant,” the group says,
maintaining that efforts to control CO2 emissions would cost
far more than the benefits might justify. Warning of what it calls “one of the
greatest deceptions of our day,” the group speaks darkly of a need for “resisting the green dragon.”

A series of Yale
Forum reports over the next several months will explore climate change
outreach and communication efforts aimed to appeal to individual religious
groups in their churches, temples, mosques, and other places of religious
services.